This isn’t strictly amateur radio, but I thought you’d find this amusing…
In the evenings, when I’m not on the air or fooling around with some electronics project, I like to watch movies from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s on Amazon. They have a great selection.
On New Year’s Eve, I watched The Mob starring Broderick Crawford. Made in 1952, Amazon billed as a “film noir detective classic.” Crawford play Johnny D’Amico, a cop who goes underground to bust up a rack on the docks. The cast includes Ernest Borgnine as one of the mobsters. I don’t know how classic it is, but it was enjoyable.
A couple of days later, I happened to run across another Broderick Crawford move, Scandal Sheet, also made in 1952. In this movie, Crawford plays Mark Chandler, a tabloid newspaper editor whose exploits backfire on him, and who becomes the subject of one of his papers own news stories. Donna Reed is one of the co-stars.
Last night, the movie du jour was Eternally Yours. When I found this movie, my wife joked, “What is this…Broderick Crawford Week?” Made in 1940, this movie stars Loretta Young and David Niven. Crawford plays only a minor character in this movie.
Instead of clicking around Amazon for Broderick Crawford movies tonight, I thought that I’d try to find some episodes of Highway Patrol. This TV series, which ran from 1955 through 1959, starred Crawford as a detective with the Highway Patrol. Highway Patrol’s imdb page describes the series as a story of “powerful patrol cars, fast motorcycles, and superheterodyne two-way radios combining to fight crime on the rural highways of America’s wide open spaces.” If you’ve ever watched this show, you will recall that Crawford was almost always on the radio in his car.
Scanning through the episodes on imdb, I found “Transmitter Danger.” According to imdb, the plot is, “Two men steal dynamite and blasting caps for use in future crimes, unaware that any radio transmission signal could trigger the caps and set off a devastating explosion.” This, of course, includes ham radio transmitters, and when the Highway Patrol discovers the danger posed by any strong radio transmission, Crawford’s character instructs his officers to find the ham radio operators in the area and warn them to stay off the air.
Broderick Crawforrd was quite prolific. imdb list 147 credits, the first in 1937 and the last in 1987. There’s no mention of him ever having a ham license, though.
Netflix recently dropped all seasons of Knight Rider, so I’ve been watching those on occasion. Rather strange the outfits those guys wore in those days. :-) Lots of leisure suits, etc. The idea of a self-driving car was pure science-fiction in those days. It’s interesting to compare that with what is coming out now, and is just around the corner.
Also, some cringe-worthy non-PC lines, especially towards women. For a non-comedy (except the repartee with KITT the car’s AI), you couldn’t get away with that stuff these days, and even a modern family comedy show tends to steer clear of that stuff.
Another car-related show that just debuted is American Auto on NBC/Peacock. If you have ever been involved in the car industry, it is a truly cringe-worthy comedy.. The most recent episode was what every publically-held company goes through, “The Earnings Call”. What a nightmare.
I have also been watching a lot of old Highway Patrol episodes on YouTube. Another episode with even more ham radio is titled “Radioactive.” It’s well worth watching.
When I was a kid, I was always fascinated by the use of radios in shows like Sea Hunt, Sky King, and especially Highway Patrol. The classic scene was Broderick Crawford standing in the open door of his patrol car, mic in hand, saying “21-50 to headquarters” and getting “Headquarters by” in response.
These shows sparked an early fascination with radio that continues to this day, and I’m not sure I’d even be a ham if it wasn’t for their influence.